Ok, so a few years ago when I started burning DVD's I didn't know any better and bought the cheapest media I could get my hands on and used them for backing up movies, data, you name it. For the most part these discs would read fine but several of them (especially movies) would stutter and stop near the end of the disc.

Now that I am older and wiser, I buy good media (TY and Verbatim) and regularly scan my discs for any errors.

Problem is, I have literally hundreds of movies on these "cheap" discs that rarely play, not because of media degradation necessarily but mostly because the media just plain stinks. For some of the movies that skip and pause at the end, I've been able to "reburn" them onto better media to fix the problem (using the cheap, skippy, junky media as the source) - I assume this works because my PC DVD-Rom Drive is more forgiving than any of my regular DVD Players.

The question is, is this reliable? If I have movies backed up on junky media that I want to transfer to better media, is it necessary to back them up from the original pressed disc again or is it probably OK to back them up from the poor quality backup? Any guidelines? Anyone had much experience doing this?

Thanks in advance!

.... Searched the forums, couldn't find anything quite like this so sorry if this is a repost!

Should be reliable if you don't encounter any copy error messages. DVD burners usually have better error correction than the DVD-ROM drives. There are a few drives which are famous for their error correction skills: LiteOn, BenQ (DrageMester once mentioned that some BenQs are necromancers and can talk to dead discs).

As long as you don't get any reading errors when you read the source disc, then it doesn't matter if you backup from the original or from a cheap media copy.

An exception would be if you're not satisfied with the compression program you originally used for putting a DVD-9 movie onto a 4.7 GB Single Layer disc, in which case you need to do it again using a better compression program.

kg_evilboy:

(DrageMester once mentioned that some BenQs are necromancers and can talk to dead discs).

Yes, but they don't always want to talk to living discs , so in general I consider my LiteOn drives to be better readers.

The question is, is this reliable? If I have movies backed up on junky media that I want to transfer to better media, is it necessary to back them up from the original pressed disc again or is it probably OK to back them up from the poor quality backup? Any guidelines? Anyone had much experience doing this?

Thanks in advance!

.... Searched the forums, couldn't find anything quite like this so sorry if this is a repost!

No you don't need to copy from your original disc - Eventhough your discs probably suck, that will not change the quality of the video, because it is stored DATA - the drive's error correction kicks in - You will get a 100% identical copy to your new discs, providing there is no uncorrectable error on your disc - you will know this with CRC errors during copy.

As the data is stored digitally, it doesn't matter.>:|sh4d0w|:<, I would recommend trying your LiteOn ROM, and using the BenQ if the LiteOn fails, because the BenQ as a burner is more likely to have better error correction. This way you can also determine the readability of the discs